The Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has handed over feeding utensils to primary schools in Kaduna state under the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP)
Presenting the items at Sheikh Gumi Primary School, Tudun Wada in Kaduna, the Humanitarian Affairs Minister, Hajiya Sadiya Faruk noted that the NHGSFP is one of the 4 key intervention programs of the federal government under its social investment program
According to her, the program seeks to boost school enrollment nutrition and economic activities across communities
The Minister who was represented at the handing over ceremony by Deputy Director legal of the ministry, Hajiya Maimuna Idris explained that the program was designed to address poverty in all forms is in collaboration with the FG and state government, where the state govt carries out the implementation while the federal government would be saddle with the responsibility for the release of funds, guidelines and policies implementation.
She said the program would benefit and impact on the lives of individual groups and communities while addressing the cross-cutting issues of hunger and malnutrition
She said they have recorded over 9million pupils enrollment on the program being fed by the federal government with the employment of 10,000 cooks under the school feeding program
According to her, the ministry has set out to strengthen its program with a view of making it sustainable and institutionalized with govt social safety net
While identifying a strategy to be reviewed to accommodate realities and improve meals quality and capacity of actors in the value chain, she added that the government had commenced implementation of intervention within NHGSFP that would assist to resolve the identified gap
She reiterated that the program which is one of the several programs seeks to ensure that the target pupils get the best experience of hygiene and safe meal consumption.
Governor Nasiru El-Rufai of Kaduna state reiterated the state government support by ensuring the success of the program across the state
“We are really committed to the program and will still continue because we have been seeing the results of this program.
“We have a total number of about 300,000 thousand feeding utensils earlier and now is the balance making it 700,000 thousand.
” Over 7000 cook are employed under the programme and they have job to do now while children are in school they eat lunch, whenever there is no school feeding going on, the school attendant drops.
“So we are trying to ensure that Kaduna State farmers are the ones supplying the foodstuff. So the benefits is are numerous across different sectors.”
In his remarks, Muntari Lawal, headteacher Sheikh Gumi primary school Tudun Wada Kaduna appreciated the federal and state government for the gesture
He said this has really helped and improved pupils attendance at schools while calling on government to ensure the sustainability of the programme.
PIAK
